trådar
by witchfingers
Summary: He died. She died. Yet, she wakes up the morning after. Yet, he's there when she goes to work. And a web of inconsistencies and a crime spin and spiral down into madness, and Linda is the only one that can pick the threads apart before it all becomes too much to bear... again. Set after 'The Secret'.
1. I

_Henning Mankell owns Wallander._

_._

_This story picks up right after _Hemligheten_. (The Secret)_

* * *

**trådar**

.

3.09 am

THE pills she takes, for sleeping, aren't good any more because she's gotten so damned used to them. So she can't sleep.

For God's sake. It's only been a week.

It's only been seven days. Of hell. On Tuesday she didn't even show up for work, how would she, after those looks- pity, worry, all that shit; not quite so long after the heavy-laden "why not take the week off, Linda? Why not take it easy?"

Easy.

Easy, for fuck's sake? Are they sick in the head, playing some kind of game with her? Or is it only their fucked up way of coping?

"Bloody hell", she says, though no one listens. But she's still angry, desperate, disoriented. So fucking heartbroken.

Sitting on the couch she can almost feel him there sitting by her, still going about the words that still haunt her.

_I've never felt so damned alone in my life_, his ghost whispers in the air, and her tears hit the parquet where in her younger years it would/could/should have been

blood.

And an empty bottle of whisky betrays what her shaking hands try to keep a secret.

But one can only keep so many secrets.

The tip of the gun tastes sour, just a bit like cold and loneliness and dirty snow, but soon it'll taste like powder, soon, when it's too late for her to notice.

And when she reckons –a fleeting thought– that she knows what she's doing, a thousand and one snapshots of the same memory flash through and make her crazy. She damned well knows what she's doing. She learned it in his living room a living hell of a week ago.

She tightens her grip, eyes shut tight in repentance and grief and repentance; she forgets to pray.

It was quiet until it becomes still. As if the wind had stopped howling outside the glass windows.

When the gun scattered to the ground and her hand drops by her side she's dead, and the parquet stains red where it should've only been whisky.

.

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**A/N:**

**trådar: threads.**

This is not a one-shot.

I'd like to know your opinion :)


	2. II

_Dedicated to my sister._

_._

**II**

* * *

6.30 am

HER alarm clock rings.

No one turns it off.

8.30 am

WALLANDER snaps his phone shut. He's irritated. Someone's been tampering with some papers on his desk, it's Martinsson's day off, and Linda won't answer his damned calls.

8.40 am

AT 8.40 am he's sick of coffee and he's had enough, and at the office it feels just like the blasted calm before the storm, he can sniff it and, he be damned, doesn't like it one bit.

Maybe he could blame his being restless on the whisky he's been cutting on since he's not going out for a run in the mornings anymore, (old heart: thanks for nothing); but he won't because he's stubborn just like that, and just like that so bothered.

And because he'll always rather ease off his annoyance with a drive, and because he'll always rather go and wake up Linda.

9.03 am

SILENT, Wallander steps into his daughter's small house, soon enough noticing her phone on the coffee table.

Irresponsible little thing.

The living room is trashed in a way he recognizes but not from _her_ precisely, and when he sees a bottle of spirits peeking (empty) between the cushions, he thinks he shouldn't have had his hopes that high.

Three knocks on her bedroom door and he's inside, shaking his head as he watches her sleep. He must remind himself he isn't entitled to disappointment.

It's been a rough week, but they're the police- they either cope or quit; and he's drunk himself to sleep too many times to dare feel aggravation. He settles for a sigh and a sad afterthought about parenting skills.

"Good morning, Linda, wake up," he says, tapping her shoulder with hesitance, "I hope your explanation for this is decent…"

She groans.

"Go away, dad. I was having a nice dream…"

9.15 am

WHEN she comes into the kitchen, she's fully dressed and he's helped himself to some coffee. He hurries the last of it and puts the cup in the sink.

Then he drives them down to the station.

9.27 am

YAWNING, she gets off the car. She's lucky she's a bit like her father, because even after he goes into the building before she does, she's not said a word at all.

.

* * *

A/N:

This is an insane way to go for a Wallander story, and normally I wouldn't go the way of the weird-and-unexplainable.

I have, however, been watching Doctor Who.

The actual plot (or is it?) is around the corner.

Also, since the chapters are short for now, I thought I'd update another one.


	3. III

**III**

* * *

9.36 am

NO one's dropped a ton of bricks onto her but she feels just as numb or worse. She feels so cold.

Sitting on her office, she remembers dying.

"Morning, Linda. Coffee?" Svartman says as he passes.

She shakes her head, mechanically. As if in a dream.

"Tea, please."

10.10 am

EVEN if Wallander is really upset about it, seconds later she can't really recall if the missing papers were on his desk or on Holgersson's, or if there are any missing papers at all.

The walls of the meeting room gleam like bleached, but should the incandescent light be bothering her like that?

It feels like a hangover, but Linda doesn't remember drinking. She remembers the sleeping pills, but in a subsidiary, dazed kind of fashion, because all she can think of is that, across her, sits like any other day Stefan Lindman.

She can't understand. She'll be sick. She feels like she'll be sick. Precisely like she can't cope.

He catches her staring, she gets a playful smirk.

Two minutes later she's excused herself and run out of the room, and she's lucky she's got to the bathroom in time, because at

10.13 am

she's thrown up the breakfast she didn't have. But God bless Svartman.

11.00 am

Her eyes are empty while she pretends to look at the computer screen, wondering when it is she'll cleanse enough for this sick nightmare to end.

From the desk in front of hers, Stefan waves and his brow creases slightly when she doesn't really react. But, talking about him, when has she ever?

"Hey, Linda, are you with us?" he asks, not serious, but not jesting either.

"I'm here," she answers, cryptic, more to convince herself. "But why are you?"

11.04 am

"Why wouldn't I be…?"

He studies her for a minute.

"Are you alright, Linda?"

11.05 am

"I am. Had a bad dream, is all."

.

* * *

**A/N:**

If you're reading, know that reviews help me know how much of this is understandable.

Be fine!


	4. IV

**IV**

* * *

8.12 pm

BEYOND the sequences of numbers on the computer screen, she sees her reflection in contrasts and despairs about the shadows under her eyes. The station is growing quiet but for Stefan's typing, still typing despite the hour, in front of her.

She's read those numbers a thousand times over and they're spotless.

She'd like to know what she's investigating, though. Because it's all been mechanic and methodical, but however far away in time this morning seems, she can only account for the time that passed since she woke up.

Because before she woke up, she was sitting on the couch in her living room, all doors locked and windows shut, her fingers on a trigger, and dying by her own hand. If she thinks about it, it seems like crazy, and each passing minute brings her further and further away from a reality that seems, now, like a bad joke.

Or is this moment, now, and the sound of Stefan's fingertips hitting the keys, the bad joke?

The splitting headache has been there the whole day, but now, in the quiet, she becomes more aware of it.

8.25 pm

"Hey, Stefan…" she begins.

He _mmms_. His typing makes for a pleasant rhythm, like raindrops against the wooden roof of a cottage.

"Can you run me over the facts again? Quickly?"

The typing stops because he's looking at her quizzically. "Sure," he says, tentatively, trying to discern the ulterior motive he will never, ever guess. "Come over here. Picture speaks a thousand words, or something."

She shrugs to try to make it look casual; failing, all she can manage is appearing tense and underslept. At least, both are true.

In the time he takes to find the file with the pictures and open it the silence grows heavy and expectant.

8.29 pm

_waffnet,jpg_

The murder weapon is an ordinary pistol. It's on one of Nyberg's slates, numbered, cleaned.

_offret,jpg_

The victim sits on a black leather sofa. Dark hair, pale skin, handsome features.

She doesn't need to be told anything because she just _remembers_. Her knuckles turn white from clutching the backrest of Stefan's computer chair, her breath hitches, her knees might just give way.

"It was made to look like a suicide, but the angle of the shot was wrong," if he was explaining it so near her, why did his voice ring so far?

He's expecting her to say something. "Was it murder?"

"Of course it was," a sardonic little laugh escapes his lips, "Unless you've a better theory…"

She's not, because a scene like a film is flashing before her eyes- his living room, so quiet, the noises, all so wrong, his hand on the coffee table so still and unnatural, and his face, _God_, his face-

"Linda…?"

8.40 pm

"God, Linda-!"

8.45 pm

"What on Earth…? Are you alright…?"

The horror on her face makes it look all the paler.

"I'm…" she can live with him looking so worried at her sweaty face after she almost faints. She's run out of cold blood.

"I'm fine. I'm a bit sick. I think I caught a cold…" she tries to smile. Tries. "…or something…"

1.23 am

SHE wakes up. She's on her bed, dressed, worn out after a dream or a vivid memory too many. She gets the car keys and drives over to her father's, hoping the nightmares won't follow her there.


	5. V

_Dedicated to lovely Ingebjorg9_

_._

**V**

* * *

.

7.00 am

.

IT's good because it smells like coffee, toast, orange juice.

Waking up in a haze of couch and orange dawn light, she's never liked her father more than in this strange morning that shouldn't have been.

When she arrives at the station, she's late, but no one says anything to her about it.

.

10.00 am

.

TO make up for her tardiness she comes early to the meeting, and her coffee keeps her silent company until the usual seats by the round table are taken.

Pictures and red marker arrows fill the white board with bare-boned information; and this time she cannot look away from the photograph, "_offret,jpg_ labeled without the name of the man that died because it fits two victims, not only one, not only this one. She discreetly turns her eyes away from it and hopes it goes unmarked.

"Very well, what do we have until now?" Wallander asks (standard question), but no one seems too eager to speculate. That would be her voice that's missing, but she can't share anything but grim looks and tight-lipped silence. She's very sorry.

It's all she can manage until the picture changes, because she's not seeing with her eyes anymore, and the victim is not sitting on a black leather couch, in a living room.

On the white board, next to the forbidding image, someone pinned the photo of the murder weapon, and she can't look at it either.

"I may be saying what's obvious," Stefan ventures, "But if they wanted this to look like a suicide, they could've chosen an easier way to do it and save a hell lot of effort."

"Stefan's got a point," Nyberg pipes in, "The victim was alive when he was shot, and must have struggled."

Wallander hmms, hops topics. "What did the neighbors say, Martinsson?"

Shrugging, the detective sees through some notes. "Not much. They seemed to like the guy quite a lot… he was… ah, a gym teacher."

"Anything else…?"

"Easy going… no, not really, much else" Martinsson says, a frown comes and goes while he speaks. "The Olssons weren't home. But except them, we talked to everyone… well, not that there were many people to talk to…"

Linda pulls off a confused look.

"The house's in the outskirts, not too many neighbors," he explains simply.

"Alright," Wallander says, "Linda, you and Martinsson go and try the Olssons again, ask them if they saw anything at all." He looks around. "Stefan, you come with me, we'll go to the school where the victim worked and see if there's any lead there."

Martinsson walks up to the white board and studies the mess of pictures and the little evidence they've got so far.

Linda summons confidence, but her voice comes out much fainter than intended when she asks "And what was his name… the victim's name, I mean?"

She does get a puzzled look or two from them that are already picking up their stuff to get going, but Wallander doesn't miss the misplaced question, and his look is much more severe: somewhere between surprised and concerned.

When Stefan brushes past her, he drops an "Oskar Lundqvist," and that's when Linda begins to feel that maybe, maybe, however absurd everything might be, maybe she can do this.

.

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_**A/N**_

It's not in me to write longer chapters, I'm sorry. To compensate I'm updating pretty fast :)


	6. VI

**VI**

* * *

11.30

Linda lets Martinsson talk, she's well absorbed in abstract (forced) parallelisms to be too coherent, anyway.

It was also snowing, that time, she thinks, he looked so peaceful through the window of his living room-

-stop.

… they'd talked to the neighbors, too, that time, to that woman than then got killed-

-_stop_.

A dog comes, tame and asking its master for food, but your master can't feed you because he's answering some questions, she thinks, gets distracted.

The Olssons look so ordinary, so unsuspecting.

"Think hard," Martinsson requests, "Wasn't there anything out of the ordinary, that day, something that called your attention?"

The dog must have sensed something, they say,

I think someone was arranging stuff in the shed, they say,

11.53

I saw a red van parked by the house in the morning, they say, I think it was delivery or something, they say.

11.54

Linda snaps.

"How didn't you hear the gunshot, then?"

11.55

She's not the only one surprised by how harsh her voice sounds, but Martinsson isn't Wallander and he draws no conclusion from it.

"I don't know…?" Mr Olsson starts, "His house isn't so near, so maybe, oh… the wind could be blowing wrong…?"

"… not really, no," his wife interrupts, "I was vacuum-cleaning that morning. I'm sorry."

Linda falls into cryptic silence again, Martinsson has nothing to say about it, the silence grows uncomfortable, and eventually, they leave.

14.20

It's cold, and Linda sees Martinsson through the foggy car windows. They've stopped at a gas station to grab something to eat, though she isn't really hungry; maybe she'd like some coffee but just not black today. Life is already too bitter as it is without midday coffee.

She gets by inspecting the wintry landscape instead, how the snow isn't dirty here in the middle of the silent countryside where it's so still and so timeless, and everything always looks the same.

20.00

Everyone's going home, so Linda grabs her coat and goes home too, or tries.

She's suddenly taken a wrong turn not entirely by mistake, and quietly she finds herself driving through the city that's turned yellow and indigo for the night, the sky and shadows dark against the piled snow tinged warm through lamplight.

It reads 20 km/h while the streets become familiar in a way that makes her feel a little like a widow, and when she parks before a cottage that's like an island in the pristine snow, she knows she's far away from Ystad now,

she knows she's sealing her course this time again like she's done before, but done the wrong way.

There's a gravel path that's well kempt and snow-flecked, leading from the driveway till the front door, but once she's walked it, before knocking she looks inside.

It's foreign to her in a way that feels like she's displaced. There's a family inside, a family just like any other, two parents, two kids, a home like any home with a hearth and hand-knit tapestry on the walls.

It's a place transfixed, though; there is no bookcases and no coffee tables, no leather couches,

most certainly no Stefan.

She shudders. He doesn't live here. Probably never even has.

One of the kids sees her, and she watches him do like one would watch a scene in a movie in slow-motion. The father looks at her: a myriad of pixels turned a person turned a man looking at her from far away, reaching out to her from a home to a freezing winter night.

He's stood up, he's come up to the window, she hears him through it saying,

"Can I help you?"

without fear. Why would he be afraid, anyway?

"Not really, no," she answers and shakes her head, wondering vaguely how well it is he can hear her,

"I'm sorry. I think I got the address wrong."

.

.

* * *

**A/N**

Hello, sorry for the wait. My muses were holding a guild, they took their time.

Please, comment. I feel motivated to go on if you do :)


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